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that he would encourage me to finish my calls quickly. She wasn’t
wrong. There were other stuffed animals scattered about the room — a polar bear
by the staircase, a zebra skin by the front door — all of which served to make
the hall not exactly welcoming, but also not the sort of place that anyone
forgets. The whole effect is pulled together by a vast fireplace — five
children could stand upright inside it during the summer, yet during the
winter, despite being constantly on the burn, it seemed incapable of throwing
out much heat.
     
    I stood in the hall and
yelled out that I was home and no one responded with any interest at all, so I
poked at the fire for a bit until I realised that if I didn’t hurry up, I
wouldn’t have time to change before supper, something about which Mama was
fanatical. I raced up the stairs, two at a time, and careered into the East
Wing. ‘Thank God for Inigo Jones,’ Mama used to say to us, and I rather agreed
with her. In the East Wing, one didn’t feel as though there were ghosts
listening through keyholes to your every word; or at least, if there were ghosts,
they were likely to be well dressed and elegant with an eye for a good bit of
plasterwork.
    Splashing
cold water on my face, I wondered whether to mention my peculiar afternoon to
my peculiar family. Best not to, I decided. I didn’t want my mother to tell me
that Aunt Clare was a ‘ghastly woman’. All women were ghastly in my mother’s
opinion, and those whom she had not met (or could not recall meeting) sounded ghastly. Men were either ‘very plain’ or ‘devastating’ and there was simply
no in between. I pulled on a clean skirt, squirted on some of the scent Uncle
George had brought me from Paris and applied a slash of red lipstick to my
mouth and cheeks. My mother liked me made up.
    ‘It’s
duck,’ called Inigo from outside my bedroom door, ‘so expect the worst.’
    I
groaned. There is always a scene when there’s duck for supper.
     
    I ran downstairs to the
dining room. The dining room feels about as medieval as you can get — rows of
gargoyles peering down from the ceiling and that sort of thing — but it’s
surprisingly light with tall windows that were forced into the nine-foot-thick
walls when siege warfare went out of fashion. The stony silences of Duck
Suppers don’t fit the room at all; its atmosphere recalls the sound of tankards
clanging together, merrye musick from the lute and people shouting
across the table as they gnaw on the bones of ye suckling pig. I found Mama
already seated at the table. Wearing her least favourite dress — a long, grey
wool number that itched and brought her up in a rash — she succeeded in looking
both livid and bored. I sank into my chair (fearfully uncomfortable; no wonder
no one ever lingered over their port at Magna) and beamed at her.
    ‘Duck
tonight,’ she announced heavily.
    ‘Why,
Mama? Is there something wrong?’
    ‘Apart
from that appalling, cheap scent you’re wearing? I cannot even begin to think when my head is swimming in French Ferns.’
    ‘You
said you liked it last weekend.’
    ‘Don’t
be ridiculous.’
    Inigo
waltzed in, shirt half unbuttoned and black hair flopping over his eye. I
braced myself.
    ‘Lovely
evening,’ he said, kissing my mother on the cheek ‘Don’t you just adore this
time of year?’
    He
pulled out his chair and sat down. Inigo is the sort of person who makes a big
performance out of the simplest of tasks, exaggerating every move until those
in the room with him start to wonder when on earth it will end. That night he
chose to elongate the act of stubbing out his cigarette so that by the time the
deed was done, I felt quite exhausted just watching him. Once he had finished
this, he moved on to the equally dramatic act of placing his napkin on his lap;
unfurling it from its neat folds, whipping it into the air, then spreading it
carefully over his trousers. We watched all this with irritation (Mama) and
suppressed